Foster Children
A habit in some egg-collectors (though not, of course, the better naturalists among them) has been brought to my notice both from Scotland and the West of Britain. After taking a clutch of eggs they substitute the eggs of a commoner bird, feeling perhaps, if one must be charitable, that the bird is thus saved some grief of mind. The practice, whatever its motive, is wholly bad and doubly cruel. The dispossessed bird is prevented from laying a second clutch, as she would ; and the adopted young, unless they are near cousins, are not sure to survive. Many species among the larger birds have peculiar feeding habits and the meat of one is the poison of another. Examples of this pernicious practice were discovered last year in districts as far apart as Perth and Radnor, in reference to the nests of both wading birds and hawks of the rarer sorts.
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